


exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical

by thescyfychannel



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blackrom, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, F/F, F/M, FLARP, Implied/Referenced NPC Death, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, Troll Rose Lalonde, on and off the flarp grounds, serious pitchflirting, things get a little intense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 20:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15202487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/pseuds/thescyfychannel
Summary: "We weave her into the lore. We bring her into the story. An' we make it so that her defeat's written in, an' we give her the choice. She can continue the story, an' end on her knees, or upturn the whole damn game."





	exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical

**Author's Note:**

  * For [auxanges](https://archiveofourown.org/users/auxanges/gifts).



> A ~mysterious new troll~ crashes Eridan and Vriska's FLARP sessions. my heart for blackrom 2k18. Bonus points for seadweller rose. we know it would happen

She calls herself the  _Quixotic_. 

It's about all you know of this strange new seadweller who's invaded your game: she is as much a mystery, an enigma, as your own Ancestors, who first marked the trails that you and Vris—the Marquise—now follow.

By the time this so-called  _Quixotic_  shows herself on the FLARPing scene, you and Marquise have been at this for sweeps, the flames of your deadly pitch rivalry flaring up to astronomical heights, or dying down to the still-glowing stalwart embers of a  _true_  temporarily resting pitch blaze. Most of the time, the rest of the trolls in your FLARP league are content to leave you two to your own games, occasionally, you're recruited for a larger campaign; more and more often, you're asked to plan or create something for the greater group—you're not surprised.

The two of you are  _experts_.

It is rare—occasional, but rare—that someone dares to intrude upon your games. They're not  _technically_ private, the two of you are expert improvisors, able to adapt to any situational change at the drop of a hat, but it's so rare that anyone dares these days.

After all, the two of you play for the highest stakes imaginable.

 

You have her distinction and her hue, gleaned from the rosters of your league. She's new, and it's surprising—she'd started playing only a sweep ago, and she'd managed to work her way up the ranks quickly enough to make it into  _your_  league? That was, by all accounts, nothing short of a miracle.

Pity that miracles were short-lived in the hands of the young gods you dream into being.

 

* * *

 

You are Eridan Ampora, and you have finally reached the age of admitting that you do not quite fit into the Empire's mold; you cannot quite feel the boots Dualscar left behind in his closet; you will never be the perfect Orphaner—and more importantly, you no longer want every piece of that.

Most of it will do.

With your age has come some measure of wisdom, some fraction of patience, and perhaps, just a flicker of tolerance.

The Quixotic destroys every inch of ground you have gained; she destroys and leaves nothing in her wake.

The interruption she is, the havoc she causes—it is nearly as intoxicating as it is infuriating.

 

From other participants in the game, from the connections the two of you have amassed over sweeps and sweeps of failed diplomacy and fruitful bar crawls, you find more: her name is Rosace Lalond, her nickname is "Rose". She is a seadweller of some distinction and no small amount of intelligence, she populates her quads with whomever she pleases. She fancies herself a writer, and for all that you want to add a generous helping of contempt to the word "fancies", she  _does_  have an online following, and based on your post-dawn binge of an archive crawl, she is  _good_.

This complicates things. The Marquise would frown on attachments; the Orphaner would agree.

But it is 10 in the morning and you're curled up against your recuperacoon in pajama pants and no shirt, curled over a glowing screen as your eyes track her slowly unfurling sentences in the course of their building a world.

 

* * *

 

You meet with Vris in a café on the staging grounds of one of the most popular FLARP locations. As long as there have been trolls interested in a hobby, there have been other trolls hoping to make money off of them, and slowly, a little village-type thing has sprung up here, rooms for rent to those trolls passing through, and quaint little places like this one.

On your less cynical days, you will admit—it's nice, to have a place like this. The owner knows your name, and greets you with something like real pleasure, and you've a feeling that you'd be missed, even if it's only for the size of your tips.

Vris saunters in, dressed in full costume, a full half hour after the time you'd planned to meet.

In anticipation of this, you'd brought a book.

 

"So," she says, dropping down into her seat. "What do we want to do about Lalond?"

The owner herself comes out with Vriska's usual, setting it down on the table before vanishing into the back—Vriska, for all her hoarding ways, treats tipping like a competition and does so  _nearly_  as well as you do—a gesture that you know your sometimes pitchmate will appreciate.

"I suppose it depends," you start, dropping a little more drawl into your words just to see her eyes go hateful, "on what exactly we want to do  _with_  her. Keep her or cull her, aye? Not many options in a game like this."

The Empire won't mind, regardless of what you do. Weed out the weak, simple enough—if she can't stay alive, she doesn't deserve to be alive. 

(but part of you, oh, part of you, wants to see what glories she could wreck if only she had the chance.)

Vris sneers, knocking back the cup of liquor like it's something much weaker. You remember the two of you practicing and practicing, until the alcohol's burn was gone, until the world tipped sideways into haze, until the drinks had as much weight as water in your system. Chasing your Ancestor's shadows, yet again.

You idly flip the page.

She smacks the book out of your hands.

"We're having a  _discussion_ , Ampora," she says, and you raise an eyebrow at her.

"Really now. I hadn't noticed."

That glorious pitch fire roars back into full flame, and you want to stoke it so bad it hurts.

Maturity, unfortunately, means that you pull your shit together and press on.

"Like I said. We've got two main options, seein' as she doesn't seem likely to back down from her current position any time soon." Your fins flick, as you bend to pick up your book, and you can nearly feel Serket's eyes tracing over you. Not bad, for a night's work. "Sure, we can break them down into subsections and suchlike, but it all boils down to basically the same thing."

It's not the answer Vriska wants to hear, but you know it's the one she needs. She gives you a nod, a little tilt of her head that means she's ready to negotiate, and you send the book back to your sylladex and get down to business.

 

* * *

 

The Quixotic spends the next six perigees thinking she's neatly dancing circles around every single one of your plans, never noticing as you paint her into a closer corner, never realizing that's she's dancing directly into each and every one of your traps. "It's the little things," Fef once told you, when the two of you first learned to weave nets. She'd shown you how to make sluice gates that baby fishes could dart into and out of easily, even as it easily kept the big fishes in.

You build Rosace Lalond a pretty little fishpond, and left a sluice gate right where the currents would take her; you'd let her dart in and out so long as she stayed a small enough fish to brave the trip.

And by the time she got cocky enough to start making mistakes, by the time she realized she was a big fish in a little pond...

She had no way out but right into your arms.

 

* * *

 

Having an enemy look up at you from their knees is always a pleasant sight. The fact that it is Rose Lalond here on your deck, kneeling before you and your kismesis, as you look down upon her, dressed in your full regalia, makes the sight all the better. It was  _your_  strategy that won the battle,  _your_  plan that brought her low.

And now it is up to the two of you to decide what to do with her.

You're...not sure you want to know what route Vris has finally decided to take.

You're not sure Rosace wants to know either.

In the balance, the world hangs.

 

* * *

 

You are Vriska Serket, and you are rapidly learning that your quads are not the single blank line on a form that you had once assumed them to be.

Pitch feelings flicker-flare-die more often than not, often enough that you had thought yourself grown accustomed to them, these one-time crushes, these meaningless flings that you invited Eridan along to, so that he wouldn't sulk.

When she had first appeared—the  _Quixotic_ , she'd called herself, pretentious bitch—you'd hated her all the more for taking away so much attention from the relationship that you'd finally managed to make work. But you'd had plans for that. You'd thought you'd had solutions.

Your solutions had slowly braided themselves into larger problems, until you'd had a rope long enough to hang yourself with.

So you'd turned back to your kismesis, and decided to sort it out as a team. After all, you two  _did_  know how to play the game in duos, and it wouldn't have been the first time. Your team-ups were legendary, amongst the league, an unholy union and reunion of still-growing gods, bonded together temporarily to rain hell down upon whoever had dared to cross them this time.

And then he'd made that stupid fucking proposition. Cull her or keep her.

Who was he to suggest you consider that? As if the very idea didn't eat you alive at night, keep you up at day.

Gods, you hated him.

 

And her.

You hated her.

 

The moment he suggested that, you'd put on your best bravado, but you knew, you  _knew_ , that there was only one option, one road you could take, one path you could follow. It was more carved into your being than your own Ancestor's name.

Worse still, you'd known even then that he knew it too. For once, forever, your pitchish waltz was about to change.

 

The Quixotic rarely came to your naval battles with a crew; she seemed to prefer to work alone. Sometimes she'd sneak aboard a ship, sometimes she'd swim out, and half the time you wondered if that was less a function of her own decisions about what sort of entrance to make, and more about her luck and skill (or lack thereof) in picking ships.

She was unnervingly good at stepping in at the perfect moments, though. Stupid, dramatic, seadwellers.

Then there was the fact that she'd  _obviously_  read the pages and pages of backstory you and Eridan produced, all the lengthy Captain's logs, and every piece of lore she could get her hands on. Even your most avid fans hadn't gone so far as to troll the last fringes of the archived forums, look up the fragmented pieces of private DMs the two of you had published, trying to find every last scrap of information. Some of those fans had  _tried_ , sure, but she'd even known about a few pieces that the two of you had turned into scavenger hunts, leaving both digital and real world breadcrumbs—either she had a hell of a hacker on her team, or she was  _determined_.

The fact that either option appealed to you was something you really needed to keep an eye on.

 

In the café, the world had tilted on its axis with Eridan's suggestion: "We weave her into the lore. We bring her into the story. An' we make it so that her defeat's written in, an' we give her the choice. She can continue the story, an' end on her knees, or upturn the whole damn game." He'd outlined the trap. You'd agreed.

You'd known what she would pick, even then. The two of you—three, now—played for the highest stakes imaginable.

The two of you had spent the next few days and nights going over your own private archives of the entirety of the lore—of course you each had one, you'd be idiots not to—gathering and collecting nods and references and one-offs that seemed unrelated, that  _were_  unrelated, but easily could be, if only they had a reason.

You retconned her existence into her world without seeming to change anything at all.

And then you'd laid your trail.

 

* * *

 

You remember, standing here above her, that Eridan never seemed to  _mind_  being invited along on your one date hates. Not so long as he had at least half of your attention for the duration, and just about all of it after.

You wonder, as Rosace Lalond looks up at the two of you, her emotions all in a whirl, if he would mind sharing you now.

One glance tells you what you already know: he very much wouldn't.

 

The game moves forward.

 

* * *

 

You are Rosace Lalond, and from your knees, you look up at the two trolls predestined to be history's greatest pitch love story. From the very moment this little venture had began, you  _knew_  it would take some demonstration of skill, some pitch flirtation of  _epic_  proportion, to get their attention on you, where it belonged.

But this? Getting them to write you—and your defeat, of course—into their world? Damn. You must have been doing better than you thought. Their precious lore, their beloved canon—where you so obviously belonged—rarely found itself altered in any fashion, but they'd done so. For  _you_.

From your knees, you smile at them, and claim your victory.

**Author's Note:**

> <33


End file.
